학술논문

Neoliberalism's Zeitgeist: The Untethered Disposition of Capitalism.
Document Type
Article
Source
New Political Science. Sep2021, Vol. 43 Issue 3, p301-319. 19p.
Subject
*CAPITALISM
*NEOLIBERALISM
*HEGEMONY
*PUBLIC debts
*ECONOMICS & politics
Language
ISSN
0739-3148
Abstract
Recent observers from the financial world have described the current status of the economy as "unhinged" and traversing "unchartered territory." These expressions reflect the unprecedented freeing of capitalism from established conventions, norms, practices, and regulations underway since the 1970s and the ascendence of neoliberalism; a process that is not captured by the allied concepts "unfettered" and financialization. Capitalism has been untethering itself from not just the regulations that curtailed action ("fettered" it) across the twentieth century, but also the established conventions, customs, and practices initially described by Marx in Capital I that guided action into the mid-twentieth century, such as acceptable debt levels and forms of financial manipulation. This essay suggests that we have entered a new phase of capitalism with crucial implications for the status of the state and its intervention in the economy and likelihood or not that the current capitalist hegemonic order can be maintained far into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]